Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and of the Court of Queen Anne Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Mrs. A. T. Thomson

CHAPTER VIII.

Release of Marlborough from prison—Confession of Young—Altercations between Anne and Mary—Illness of Anne—of Mary—Death of the latter—Reconciliation of King William to the Princess. 1694.

The pretended association and audacious forgery of Young were discovered immediately upon his being confronted with the Bishop of Rochester. The Earl of Marlborough was consequently released, but not until the 15th of June, that being the last day of Term. He was then admitted to bail, the Marquis of Halifax and the Duke of Shrewsbury being his sureties; an act of kindness for which they were, however, erased shortly afterwards from the list of privy counsellors.[^[267]]

Some time afterwards, when Young was on the point of suffering the penalty of death for another offence, he confessed, with pretended contrition, that he had obtained the Earl of Marlborough’s seal and signature by addressing him under the character of a country gentleman, inquiring the character of a domestic. This avowal completely exonerated Marlborough, who had been himself startled at the similarity of the signature, subscribed to the association, to his own handwriting.

Conscious, perhaps, of deserving disgrace, Lord Marlborough remained during the latter years of Williams reign chiefly at Sandridge, sometimes exchanging his residence for apartments at Berkeley-House, which Lady Marlborough, in virtue of her office about Queen Anne, inhabited on the removal of the Princess thither from Sion House. The Countess of Marlborough meantime devoted herself to the care of the Princess, who was confined, at Sion House, of a lifeless infant, whilst yet altercations between her and her sister were rife. Anne, however, sent due intelligence of her confinement to Queen Mary, first by Sir Benjamin Bathurst, and then by Lady Charlotte Beverwart, who waited until the Queen should have held a conference with the Earl of Rochester, before she could see her Majesty. The delivery of her message produced a visit to Sion House, of which the Duchess gives the following account.[^[268]]

“She (the Queen) came attended by the Ladies Derby and Scarborough. I am sure it will be necessary to have a good voucher to persuade your Lordship[^[269]] of the truth of what I am going to relate. The Princess herself told me, that the Queen never asked her how she did, nor so much as took her by the hand. The salutation was this: ‘I have made the first step, by coming to you, and now I expect you will make the next, by removing my Lady Marlborough.’ The Princess answered, that she had never in all her life disobeyed her, except in that one particular, which she hoped would some time or other appear as unreasonable to her Majesty as it did to her. Upon which the Queen rose up and went away, repeating to the Prince, as he led her to the coach, the same thing that she had said to the Princess.”

Lady Derby, one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, took up the cue from her royal mistress, and never even went up to the bedside to inquire how the Princess was. The Queen, indeed, upon her return, was heard to say, “she was sorry for having spoken to the Princess,” whose agitation she had observed was so great, that “she trembled, and looked as white as the sheets.”[^[270]] Nevertheless, soon after this visit, all company was forbidden to wait upon the Princess, and her guards were taken from her.

The King was not in England when these indignities were offered to the Princess, and Mary and her constant adviser, Lord Rochester, were alone responsible for the harshness with which an only sister was treated. But Anne, as the presumptive heir apparent, was dear to a people who dreaded the horrors of civil war, and of a disputed succession. In coming from Sion House to London, without guards, her coach was attacked by highwaymen, a circumstance which produced many severe animadversions on the danger to which the heir of the throne was exposed, without an escort, at a period when such adventures were not unknown even in Piccadilly.[^[271]]

Lady Marlborough, distressed at being the manifest cause of the indignities offered to her gracious mistress, entreated Anne to allow her to leave her, and used every argument her thoughts could suggest to persuade the Princess to that effect. These well-meant endeavours were unavailing; for “when I said anything that looked that way,” the Duchess relates, “she fell into the greatest passion of tenderness and weeping that is possible to imagine;[^[272]] and though my situation at that time was so disagreeable to my temper, that could I have known how long it was to last, I could have chosen to have gone to the Indies sooner than to endure it, yet, had I been to suffer a thousand deaths, I think I ought to have submitted rather than have gone from her against her will.”

The result of the Princess’s vexations was a fever, after her confinement, on recovering from which she sent to Dr. Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, hoping through his mediation to convey to Mary her sense of the honour which the Queen, in her last heartless visit, had conferred upon her. Dr. Stillingfleet, whom the Princess found, in her conversation with him, to have become very partial to the Queen, undertook to be the bearer of a letter, in which Anne requested permission to pay her duty to her sister. The Queen’s reply evinced a determined, and, if not an unkind, almost persecuting spirit. She began by telling her sister that since she had herself never used compliments, “so now they will not serve.” She declared that “words would not make them live together as they ought;” there was but one thing she had required, “and no other mark would satisfy her.”[^[273]] But she must have been ignorant of the tenacity of her sister’s disposition, and only partially aware of the influence which the Duchess exercised over the easily moulded Anne, if she could have expected such a sacrifice.

Meantime Lord and Lady Marlborough had the misfortune to lose their infant son, Lord Brackley,—an event to which Anne alludes in the following terms.

“I am very sensibly touched with the misfortune that my dear Mrs. Freeman has had of losing her son, knowing very well what it is to lose a child; but she knowing my heart so well, and how great a share I bear in all her concerns, I will not say any more on this subject, for fear of renewing her passion too much. Being now at liberty to go where I please, by the Queen’s refusing to see me, I am mightily inclined to go to-morrow, after dinner, to the Cockpit, and from thence privately in a chair to see you some time next week. I believe it will be time for me to go to London, to make an end of that business of Berkeley-house.”

This letter of condolence contained a copy of the cold and arbitrary reply of the Queen to the Princess; the original, Anne specifies, being kept by her, in case it should be necessary to show it for her own justification. At the same time she observes, that having extorted an admission from Dr. Stillingfleet that she had made “all the advances that were reasonable,” she thought that the more “it was noised about that she would have waited on the Queen, but that she refused to see her, the better; and therefore that she should not scruple saying so to anybody, when it came in the way.”[^[274]]

Not, however, satisfied with the perpetual assurances of the Princess, that “only death should part her from her dear Mrs. Freeman”—that if her dear friend should ever leave her, “it would break her faithful Mrs. Morley’s heart”—and other repeated declarations of the same nature, the Countess sought to ascertain the sentiments of the Prince George, upon the subject of her quitting the Princess’s service. The reply of the warm-hearted, and certainly at this period of her life, the generous Anne, was equally distinct upon this point as upon the other bearings of the question.

“In obedience to dear Mrs. Freeman, I have told the Prince all she desired me, and he is so far from being of another opinion, that, if there had been any occasion, he would have strengthened me in my resolutions, and we both beg you would never mention so cruel a thing any more.”

“Can you think either of us so wretched,” she continues, “as for the sake of twenty thousand pounds, and to be tormented from morning to night with flattering knaves and fools, we should forsake those we have such objections to, and that we are so certain are the occasion of all their misfortunes?”

“No, my dear Mrs. Freeman,” she thus addressed her in another part of her letter, “never believe your faithful Morley will ever submit. She can wait with patience for a sunshiny day, and if she does not see it, yet she hopes England will flourish again. Once more give me leave to beg you would be so kind never to speak of parting more, for, let what will happen, that is the only thing that can make me miserable.”[^[275]]

It is curious, but to the experienced observer of all that passes among the social relations of life, whether of friendship, love, or kindred, not surprising, to find these letters so full of tenderness, and of disinterested attachment, and so acceptable at one time to Lady Marlborough, thus characterized, when she dipped her pen in gall to write the character of her former patroness.

“Her letters,” says the plain-spoken Duchess in her private memoranda, “were very indifferent, both in sense and spelling, unless they were generally enlivened with a few passionate expressions, sometimes pretty enough, but repeated over and over again, without the mixture of anything either of diversion or instruction.”[^[276]]

Thus firmly fixed in the affections of the Princess, none of the numerous efforts which were made by different members of the household, many of whom had been promoted to their situations by the Countess, availed to induce Anne to allow her favourite to be removed—Lord Rochester, her uncle, in vain working to effect that end. The result was a direct and unhappily prolonged hostility between the Queen and the Princess, and it was made a point of duty with regard to the one sister, that no courtier should visit the other. Lady Grace Pierrepoint was one of the few ladies, with the exception of some female members of Jacobite families, who determined to make her election between the two courts in favour of Anne; other ladies of high rank made their visits very rare, paying their respects only on certain occasions. A more decided mark of royal spleen was testified, through the agency of Lord Rochester, when the Princess visited Bath. This nobleman, who loved pageants and addresses, “wrote to the Mayor of Bath, a tallow-chandler, forbidding him, or any of his brethren of the corporation, to show any respect to the Princess Anne, without leave from the court.”

“But it must be owned,” says the Duchess in her contemptuous way, “that this lord had a singular taste for trifling ceremonies. I remember, when he was treasurer, he made his white staff be carried by his chair-side, by a servant bare-headed; in this, among other things, so very unlike his successor, my Lord Godolphin, who cut his white staff shorter than ordinary, that he might hide it, by taking it into the chair with him.”[^[277]]

“My Lord Rochester,” however, must, the Duchess imagines, “have been disappointed, if he expected that the Princess regarded this petty exertion of power with anything but contempt.” Anne was, in fact, infinitely more vexed to observe a frown on the brow of her favourite, than to be precluded from the honours usually paid her.

“Dear Mrs. Freeman must give me leave to ask her,” writes the submissive Queen, on one occasion, “if anything has happened to make her uneasy. I thought she looked to-night as if she had the spleen. And I can’t help being in pain whenever I see her so.”[^[278]]

With respect to the mayor’s omission of the wonted respect of going to church with her, Anne thought it was a thing to be laughed at; nor was she probably disturbed in her general placidity by “another foolish thing,” as the Duchess calls it, a trifling, but characteristic proof of Mary’s unsisterly vengeance. When the Princess resided at Berkeley-House, it was her habit to attend St. James’s church; and the preacher, in compliance with custom, ordered a copy of his text to be laid upon her cushion. But Mary, carrying her resentments into that sacred edifice without whose porch worldly passions should be left, ordered that this observance also should be abandoned: the minister, however, refusing to comply, unless an order were given in writing, which the Queen and her advisers “did not care to do,” “that noble design,” as the Duchess terms the Queen’s prohibition, “was dropt.”[^[279]]

Berkeley-house, to which the Princess about this time removed, was the scene of all those cabals, those fears and resentments, those heart-burnings and bickerings, by which a minor court, in open hostility with the more powerful, but less popular head of the family, is tolerably sure to be infested. Berkeley-house, standing on the site of Devonshire-house, and giving the name to Berkeley-square, was at this time the last house in Piccadilly, a distinction which Devonshire-house also possessed until long after the year 1700.[^[280]]

The Princess lived here with her favourite and other friends in a very quiet manner, never seeing the Queen, who still, through Lady Fitzharding and other mediators, insisted upon the dismissal of Lady Marlborough as the condition of reconciliation between herself and Anne; whilst Anne, with her native obstinacy, adhered to her friend in preference to her kindred.

The unkindness of the Queen, however, could only injure the Princess in one way, that of stopping her revenues; but Lord Godolphin was Treasurer, a man too useful to the court to be offended, and who, as the King knew, would quit his office in preference to refuse paying an annuity which had been voted by act of Parliament. Between these discordant sisters, one stay, one common subject of interest and source of affection, there still however was, to mitigate the anger of Mary, and to preserve the semblance of a bond of union between the family. The hopes of the nation, the pride of his family and his preceptors, and the promising representative of weak parents, the infant Duke of Gloucester was now the sole object of mutual interest, for to their common parent the royal sisters could not look conjointly for comfort. Anne had, indeed, already reconciled herself to that culpable monarch, though injured parent, whom she had deserted in the hour of trial; and, upon the threatened invasion of James, had written to assure him that she should fly to him the instant she heard of his landing, saying, “She could ask for his forgiveness, being his daughter, but how could she ask him to present her duty to the Queen?”[^[281]] But Mary, at variance to her dying day with her father, could not join with her sister in those expressions of duty and sentiments of affection, which might have proved a bond between her and Anne, but which were all turned to bitterness in the mind of one who loved her husband, to use her own habitual expression, “more than she loved her life.”[^[282]]

William Duke of Gloucester, a child, at this time, of three years old, was now, therefore, the only bond between these disunited sisters. This Prince, subsequently the favoured charge of the great Marlborough, and of the celebrated Bishop Burnet, was the only surviving offspring of the Prince and Princess of Denmark, of six children, most of whom had died as soon as they were born, and only one of whom, a daughter, had attained the age of a twelvemonth. Both William and Mary appear to have regarded this promising but premature scion of their house as their own peculiar possession; and William, especially after the death of his Queen, manifested the tenderest solicitude for the health and welfare of the young Prince; a circumstance which seemed to imply that the Duke had been dear to his deceased and lamented wife.[^[283]]

The Duchess of Marlborough, indeed, intimates that whenever her Majesty made the young Prince any present of “rattles” or other playthings, “she took especial care to have her attention inserted in the Gazette. Whenever the Duke was ill, she sent a bedchamber woman to Camden-house, to inquire how he did. But this compliment was made in so offensive a manner to the Princess, that I have often wondered how any mortal could hear it with patience. For whoever was sent, used to come without any ceremony into the room where the Princess was, and passing by her, as she stood or sat, without taking more notice of her than if she had been a rocker, go directly up to the Duke, and make their speech to him, or to the nurse, as he lay in her lap.”[^[284]]

The Princess, however, happy in her favourite circle, seems to have received these indignities with her wonted apathy, whilst she testified her affection for Lord and Lady Marlborough by the offer of a pension of a thousand pounds a year, creating a new place in her household as an excuse for that granted annuity to one whom she considered as a victim in her cause. But Marlborough, though his income was materially reduced by the loss of his lucrative employments, respectfully declined the generosity of his kind patroness.[^[285]]

These bickerings between the Queen and the Princess were soon, however, painfully and effectually terminated. The small-pox at that time raged fearfully in London. Thousands died of the disease, and apprehensions were entertained for the safety of the Queen, who had never had the cruel distemper. Mary had a short time previously been much concerned at the sudden decease of Archbishop Tillotson, who was struck with palsy whilst performing service in Whitehall Chapel. She had spoken of this revered prelate with tears, and her mind had been considerably disturbed at the loss of so valuable a friend. Whilst still grieving for this event, she fell ill; but her natural spirits sustained her. The disease seemed to subside; and to Bishop Burnet, who was with her for an hour on the day of the attack, she complained of nothing. On the following morning she went out; but returned oppressed with the cruel malady to her closet. There she shut herself up, burnt many of her papers, and put the rest in order. Nevertheless, thinking it might be only a transient indisposition, she used some slight remedies: these were ineffectual to relieve her, and in two days the small-pox appeared in its most malignant form.[^[286]]

The Princess Anne was at this time indisposed, and remaining, by her physician’s advice, upon one floor, lying constantly on a couch. Yet, upon hearing of the Queen’s illness, she sent a lady of the bedchamber with a message of kindness and respect, begging that her Majesty would allow her the happiness of waiting on her, and declaring that she would run any risk in her present situation to have that satisfaction. To this message, which was delivered to the Queen herself, a reply was returned, in the King’s name, that the Queen would send an answer on the following day. Accordingly a letter arrived, announcing that, since the Queen was ordered to be kept as quiet as possible, the writer, Lady Derby,[^[287]] was ordered by the King to request that the Princess would defer her visit.

The construction which Lady Marlborough put upon this “civil answer was, that poor Queen Mary’s disease was mortal, more than even if the physicians had told her that it was;” yet she added also the uncharitable interpretation, “that the deferring the Princess’s coming was only to leave room for continuing the quarrel, in case the Queen should chance to recover, or for reconciliation with the King (if that should be thought convenient) in case of the Queen’s death.”[^[288]]

Be that as it may, the two sisters never met again. The King, overwhelmed by a knowledge of the Queen’s danger, seems to have been occupied with far different thoughts than those imputed to him by the Duchess, and probably consulted only the Queen’s well-doing, when he prohibited a harassing interview between her and the Princess, which might have hastened the approaching event. On the third day of Mary’s illness, the stern, reserved monarch was completely bowed down by the intelligence that the medical advice called to supersede the erroneous treatment of Dr. Ratcliffe, was resorted to too late. He called Dr. Burnet into his closet, and with a burst of anguish exclaimed, that there was “No hope of the Queen; that, from being the happiest, he was now going to be the most miserable creature upon earth.” The Queen bore the awful consciousness of approaching death with far more composure than he, for whom she had sacrificed every other tie, could assume. When apprised by Archbishop Tenison that all hope of her recovery was at an end, she quickly comprehended the reverend prelate’s intention, for which he sought to prepare her by degrees. She evinced no agitation. She said, she thanked God that she had always resolved that nothing should be left to the last hour; she had then nothing to do, but to look up to God, and submit to his will. Indeed, as one who loved this virtuous Princess observes, “her piety went farther than submission, for she seemed to desire death rather than life.”[^[289]]

Whilst this solemn scene was passing at Kensington, the Princess sent every day to inquire after the state of the Queen, but received no encouragement to urge her desire of an interview. On one occasion, the Lady Fitzharding, who had the charge of the Duke of Gloucester, broke into the room where the dying Mary lay, and declaring the Princess’s message to her, endeavoured to impress her Majesty with a sense of her sister’s distress. The Queen, according to the Duchess of Marlborough, returned no answer but “a cold thanks.”[^[290]] Nor did she ever, in the course of her illness, send any message whatsoever to the sister from whom she was estranged. In extenuation of this seeming inconsistency in one so devout, it must be stated, that she had so far adopted the stoical notions of her husband, as to preclude him and herself from the trial of a last farewell. After causing to be delivered to him a small casket, in which she had formerly written her sentiments, she devoted her time to prayer. The Archbishop of Canterbury administering, and all the bishops standing round, Mary received the Holy Communion—that solemn service, in which, even in the fulness of health, we cannot participate without an awful consciousness of the immediate presence of our Maker. Faint but calm, the dying Queen followed the whole office; and, when that was concluded, she composed herself to meet her God. She slumbered sometimes, but she was not refreshed; for, “like others who labour and are heavy laden,” nothing refreshed her but prayer. At last her strong reason began to be obscured, her speech to falter; she tried in vain to say something to the King; she endeavoured to join in the holy offices of the archbishops. Cordials were given her; but all was ineffectual; and she sank about one o’clock in the morning of the twenty-eighth of December, her disorder having first displayed fatal symptoms on Christmas Day.[^[291]]

In this beautiful picture of an exemplary deathbed, but two objects are wanting: a father reconciled, a sister restored to affection. But the father, who regretted more that his daughter died unforgiven by him, and undutiful, than her death itself, was at a distance; his pardon and his blessing could not have been obtained. The sister prayed for admission, and was refused. Such is the effect of party violence, which ruled even in the breast of the pious, affectionate, and strong-minded Mary! If it be said, “how hardly shall a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven,” it may also be a matter of consideration how difficult it must prove for the soul, torn by the strong contending passions which darken a political career, to enter into that blessed rest, where selfishness and ambition can find no mansion!

The Princess Anne, unchecked by indifference to her amiable advances, by the advice of Lord Sunderland and others, wrote to the King, shortly after the Queen’s death, a letter expressive of her “sincere and hearty sorrow for his affliction,” and declaring herself “as sensibly touched by his misfortune,” as if she had not been so unhappy as to fall under her sister’s displeasure. Her letter found the King too dejected, and too much humbled by his calamity, to think of refusing her petition. During the Queen’s illness, his anguish had broken out into violent lamentations; after her death his spirits sank so low, that many persons feared that he was following her. In this depression of spirits and strength, he betook himself to those aids of religion which, with a due seriousness, and a respect for sacred subjects, he had never, during his busy intercourse with the great world, resorted to with heartfelt earnestness, as the only solace, the only cure for bereavements which leave us heart-broken, dependent, and wretched beings.

Whilst William was in this state of mind, the great and good Lord Somers, who had long lamented the feuds which disturbed the royal family, visited him at Kensington, for the purpose of interceding with a view to reconciling these differences. He found the King sitting at the end of his closet in an agony of grief, little to be expected from one who rarely betrayed the passions by which his spirits were now overwhelmed. The King, lost in his own bitter reflections, paid no attention to the entrance of Lord Somers, until that nobleman, remarkable for his courtesy and prudence,[^[292]] broke the silence by expressing a hope that now all disunion between his Majesty and the Princess Anne might cease. “My lord, do what you will; I can think of no business,” was the agonised reply of the King; and to all the observations which Somers made, he returned no other answer.[^[293]] The Duchess of Marlborough, however, imputes the reconciliation to Lord Sunderland, who had, on all occasions, as she says, shown himself to be a man of sense and breeding, and had used his utmost endeavours, before the Queen’s death, to make up the breach between the two sisters, though, she thinks, he never could have succeeded during the lifetime of Mary. Although the reconciliation was opposed by the Earl of Portland, yet the quarrel was at last adjusted; and Anne visited the King, who received her with cordiality, and promised her that St. James’s palace should in future be her residence.[^[294]]

“And now,” says the Duchess, “it being publicly known that the quarrel was made up, nothing was to be seen but crowds of people of all sorts flocking to Berkeley-house, to pay their respects to the Prince and Princess: a sudden alteration which, I remember, occasioned the half-witted Lord Carmarthen to say one night to the Princess, as he stood close by her in the circle, ‘I hope your highness will remember that I came to wait upon you when none of this company did;’ which caused a great deal of mirth.”

But although matters were thus publicly made up, the King, at least in the opinion of the Duchess, never cared to testify the slightest public respect for Anne, nor to conciliate her regard. From the beginning of his reign, when he committed the heinous offence on which much stress was laid, that of disappointing the Princess of a plate of peas on which she had set her mind,[^[295]] to the last hour, he was still mightily indifferent to the placid, but, it must be acknowledged, somewhat uninteresting Anne. But all his affronts were borne with imperturbable patience by the Princess. When she waited upon his Majesty at Kensington, no more respect was shown her than to any other lady, “till the thing caused some discourse in town, after which Lord Jersey waited upon her once or twice down stairs, but not oftener. And if any one came to meet her,” continues the Duchess, “it was a page of the back-stairs, or some person whose face was not known. And the Princess, upon these occasions, waited an hour and a half, just upon the same foot as the rest of the company, and not the least excuse was made for it.”[^[296]]

All this submission was very galling to the proud, high-spirited favourite, who would have braved William in presence of his whole court, had she been the Princess, rather than have paid one tribute of respect to the careless and contemptuous monarch. Lady Marlborough looked on indignant, and was of opinion that the Princess conciliated a great deal too much. She could not endure that her royal mistress should move a single step that she would not have taken in her place; nor was there a single advance on Anne’s part of which she approved, except her last letter to the Queen, and her offer of visiting her dying sister.[^[297]] This candid acknowledgment she makes with an almost indecent boldness, not to be wondered at in one who, in her later days, defended herself, in a court of justice, a suit against her grandson.[^[298]]

It must, indeed, be allowed, that the list of petty grievances with which the Duchess swells the indignities offered to the Princess Anne, appears, at this distance of time, puerile and vexatious. Her complaints are detailed with a solemnity which seems ridiculous, now that all the stirring passions which gave importance to those incidents are at rest. Her narrative, sarcastic as it is, was unfortunately polished by the hired assistance of Hook, the historian, and, after repeated revisions, which must have shorn many pungent and characteristic passages, was given to the disappointed public, respectably moderate. Still these “annals of a wardrobe,” as Horace Walpole designates them, this “history of the back stairs,” possess—as even he who speaks of “old Marlborough” with bitter contempt is fain to allow—some “curious anecdotes, some sallies of wit, which fourscore years of arrogance could not fail to produce in so fantastic an understanding.”[^[299]]

With the account of the death of Queen Mary, much of the Duchess’s caustic satire subsides. Still she has a few touches reserved for William. Even the sorrow which the monarch experienced, and his desolate situation in a foreign country, where he reigned unloved, did not soften the unceasing aversion and contempt with which the Duchess regarded the royal widower.

His first grave offence, after Mary’s decease, was his silence in regard to a letter written by the dutiful and subservient Anne, congratulating his Majesty upon the honour done to his name and adopted country, by the taking of Namûr. Probably the King would have received congratulations with a better grace, from any one than from her, who might regard herself as having a sort of partnership interest in the glory of England. Good wishes from Anne were somewhat like the next heir to an estate setting forth a strain of rejoicing, on the growth of timber, or on the improvement of lands, to him who was actually in possession. The King took no notice of the humble epistle, or, in the Duchess’s words, “showed his brutal disregard for the writer,” by never returning “any answer to it, nor so much as a civil message.”[^[300]]

The next offence, and it certainly was one which spoke ill of William’s good breeding, was his compelling Prince George to wear coloured clothes on the royal birthday, almost immediately after the death of his brother, the King of Denmark. The Prince, knowing that deep mourning was sometimes allowed in certain instances, requested, through Lord Albemarle, permission to keep on his mourning when he paid his respects to his Majesty.[^[301]] William’s ungracious reply was, that he should not see his brother-in-law unless he came in colours; and the subservient Prince was forced to comply.

“I believe,” says the Duchess, after relating this instance of William’s contemptuous conduct, “I could fill as many sheets as I have already written, with relating the brutalities that were done to the Prince and Princess in this reign. The King was, indeed, so ill-natured, and so little polished by education, that neither in great things nor in small had he the manners of a gentleman.”[^[302]]

The Duchess makes no allowance for his Majesty’s habits and character. Precise as he seems to have been in the article of Prince George’s attire, William hated formalities, and especially those public addresses which must be so peculiarly tedious to a sovereign. Respecting this very siege of Namûr, touching which he gave so much offence to the Duchess, he committed an act of ill-breeding towards no less an individual than the mayor of a borough. This worshipful person having come to court to present an address, combining the two dissimilar topics of condolence for the death of the Queen, and congratulation for the success at Namûr, introduced himself by saying that “he came with joy in one hand and grief in the other.” “Pray put them both into one hand, good Mr. Mayor,” was the King’s laconic remark, heedless of the impression which he made upon formal courtiers and ladies in waiting, who, like the Duchess of Marlborough, could sooner pardon a defect in morals, than a solecism in manners.[^[303]] It was probable, from his Majesty’s known aversion to compliments, public and private, that he intended no offence to the Princess Anne, when he committed the “brutality” of not answering her letter.

Notwithstanding the spirit manifested in these animadversions by the Countess of Marlborough, the Earl sought every opportunity of maintaining the good understanding between the Princess and the court.[^[304]] This he justly thought of importance, possibly for the reason avowed by Dalrymple, that an apparent reconciliation between the royal family had all the good effects of a real one, “because it obliged inferior figures to suspend their passions by the example of their superiors.”[^[305]] But Marlborough, although taking an active part in the House of Lords, was not at present allowed to enter the royal presence, though having a “fair and very great reversion” of favour.[^[306]]

The only adverse event during the remaining portion of William’s reign, which particularly affected Lord and Lady Marlborough, was the conspiracy of Sir John Fenwick, one of the most active Jacobites of the day. With this party, though not personally with Fenwick, Marlborough, it cannot be denied, had been deeply and culpably implicated. No considerations can excuse the dishonourable intercourse which Marlborough, in conjunction with Godolphin and others, had carried on with the exiled monarch. It resulted from a temporising and mean policy, which sought to secure an indemnity from James in case of his restoration, or of the accession of the Prince of Wales. If the reasons which engaged Marlborough to aid the accession of William were valid, and sprang from a pure source, those reasons were still in force to promote the peaceable rule of the reigning monarch, and to support him on his throne.

The rash encouragement which Godolphin and Marlborough had given to James’s emissaries, now involved them in a serious dilemma. Fenwick, convicted, upon the evidence of an intercepted letter to his wife, of being concerned in the plot formed at this time to assassinate William, sought to avert the justly merited sentence from which he afterwards suffered, by a disclosure of the names of those whom he declared to have been concerned in the conspiracy. He was instructed in the details of his pretended confessions, by Lord Monmouth, afterwards the noted and eccentric Earl of Peterborough. He accused the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earl of Marlborough, Godolphin, and Russell, of treasonable practices; and of having, in particular, accepted pardons from the late King.

These noblemen were, however, fully cleared of the charges made against them by Fenwick; and Marlborough, standing up in his place in the House of Lords, solemnly denied ever having had any conversation whatsoever with Sir John Fenwick during the reign of the present King. Lord Godolphin vindicated himself in the same manner. Fenwick was executed, and Monmouth stripped of all his offices, and sent to the Tower; but was saved from further punishment by the mediation of Bishop Burnet.[^[307]] Cleared, therefore, from this atrocious accusation, Marlborough, who, with his wife, had suffered much uneasiness whilst the proceedings against Fenwick were pending, experienced, in the end, the security which a subject derives from the dominion of a rightly thinking and high-minded prince, and the superior strength and wisdom of such a government to the uncertain rule of passion and despotism. It was William’s policy to make large allowance for the transient defection of his subjects; to endeavour to bring them back to duty by mildness and forgiveness; and to show no petty spleen, nor undue displeasure at the lingering fondness which they might cherish for their absent and justly-deposed monarch. Some time, however, elapsed before Marlborough received any outward proof of his sovereign’s restored confidence. William, indeed, openly regretted that he could not employ a nobleman who was great both in military affairs and as a cabinet minister, and “one who never made a difficulty.”[^[308]] But, at length, either the King’s scruples were overcome: or, as he allowed, in any enterprise, choosing to act upon the principle of converting an enemy into a friend, he appointed Marlborough to a situation of the highest trust.

CHAPTER IX.
1697, 1698.

Circumstances attending the Peace of Ryswick—Appointment of Marlborough to the office of preceptor to the Duke of Gloucester—Bishop Burnet—His appointment and character.

The peace of Ryswick, in 1697, was accompanied by two acts, intended, on the part of William the Third, to relieve and indemnify his predecessor for some of his disappointments and afflictions. On the one hand, the King bound himself to pay fifty thousand pounds a year to Mary of Modena, the wife of James; a sum which would have been her jointure had she continued Queen of England. By another act William consented that the son of James the Second, afterwards known as the Pretender, should be educated in England in the Protestant faith, and should inherit the crown after his own death.[^[309]] Such were his just intentions; but, in consequence of the distinct refusal of James on both these points, the Pretender lost his crown, and his mother her jointure; and the hopes of the country, and the kindly feelings of the King, were henceforth centered in William, the young Duke of Gloucester, the only surviving child of the Prince and Princess of Denmark.

The Duke was now entering his tenth year; and it was thought advisable to withdraw him from the care of female instructresses, and to place him under the guidance of the learned and the valiant. He was a child of singular promise, and of a precocious capacity, foreboding weakness of body and premature decay. The King long hesitated before he could resolve to comply with the wishes of the Princess Anne, who earnestly desired that Marlborough might be appointed her son’s governor. The situation was first offered to the Duke of Shrewsbury, but was declined by that nobleman, whose infirm health rendered him, at that time, desirous of retiring from public life. There was a considerable struggle in the mind of William before he could decide to place, in so responsible an office as that of governor, the man upon whom all the most enlightened of his advisers had fixed, as the proper tutor for the Prince. At length, the persuasions of the Earl of Sunderland, and of Lord Albemarle, who had succeeded Lord Portland in the royal favour, induced the monarch to bestow the honour upon Marlborough. It was conferred with these remarkable words: “Teach the Duke of Gloucester, my lord, to be like yourself, and my nephew cannot want accomplishments.”[^[310]] On the evening of this appointment, June 19th, 1698, Lord Marlborough was sworn one of the privy council.

This sudden restoration to good fortune and to the King’s confidence acted doubtless beneficially upon the disposition of Lord Marlborough, who, like all superior natures, received benefits with the kindly spirit with which they were proffered. But no conciliation could mollify the implacable spirit of Lady Marlborough, nor reconcile her to the monarch who had once consented to the indignity offered to her, of forbidding her the court. Instead, therefore, of softening her tone when she discusses the events of this period, or of acknowledging the distinction conferred on Lord Marlborough, she refers to the arrangements respecting the household of the young Duke, as plainly proving that the Princess judged rightly, when she refused, on a former occasion, to leave her settlement to the generosity of the King.

William, as the Duchess affirms, obtained from Parliament a grant of fifty thousand pounds a year for the settlement of the young Duke, but allowed the young Prince five thousand pounds only of that sum, refusing even to advance one quarter for plate and furniture, which the Princess Anne was therefore obliged to supply out of her own funds.[^[311]] The Princess received, also, a promise from his Majesty that she should have the appointment of all the household, excepting to the offices of the deputy-governor and gentlemen of the bedchamber. The message which brought Anne this assurance was, what the Duchess calls, “so humane,” and had so different an air from anything the Princess had been used to, that it gave her “extreme pleasure;” and she instantly set about to fill up the appointments, making various promises to her own, and undoubtedly to her favourite’s, friends. What then were the consternation of the Princess, and the fury of the Countess of Marlborough, when, after a long delay in confirming these appointments, they were apprised that the King, who was going abroad, would send a list of those persons whom he had selected for the Duke’s household.

The cogitations of two ladies, on such an occasion, may be imagined. The disappointment of various friends, the affronts sustained by others—the loss of patronage—the sure gain of contempt and ridicule—all the awkwardness of the affair must have ruffled even the placid Anne, who was probably, however, not half sufficiently incensed to satisfy the far more irritable and indignant Countess.

Anne, too, was in that condition which rendered any annoyance to her a matter seriously to be dreaded. She had settled who were to be grooms of the bedchamber, and who were to be pages of honour, and was not by any means disposed to unsettle these appointments.

All this was duly represented to the King by Lord Marlborough, who respectfully hoped that his Majesty “would not do anything to prejudice the Queen in her present state;” but this intercession produced no other effect than a violent fit of passion in the King, who declared that the Princess “should not be Queen before her time,” and that he would make a list of what servants the Duke should have.

At length, however, Keppel Earl of Albemarle, who had more influence than any other courtier with the King, undertook to settle the affair. He took the list of the household made out by the Princess, and, whilst they were in Holland, showed it to the King. The list was, as it happened, approved by William, with very few alterations. But that was not, the Duchess declares, owing to the King’s goodness, but “to the happy choice which the Princess had made of the servants.” Nay, she further insinuates that the reason of William’s desiring to alter the list was, that he might place in the household some of the servants of the last Queen, and by that means save their pensions.[^[312]]

At length, however, the arrangements were completed. It must be acknowledged they were made somewhat too soon for the benefit of the royal child. The young Prince, delicate in frame, would have been happier perhaps, and, in the event of his living, stronger in mind as well as in body, had nature, and not etiquette, been made the rule of his youthful pursuits, and if state and ceremonials, too fatiguing for his infancy, had been postponed until his childish powers could better sustain their injurious effects upon his health. But the little victim, who had struggled into boyhood, the only one of his family, and who was doomed to be the national hope, and the sole object of the monarch’s care, was to be rendered valiant, theological, wise—a hero, a wonder—in short, that miserable being, a prodigy.

Marlborough was to teach him military tactics and the theory of war. The boy delighted in all that boys of simpler habits, and in a happier sphere, usually delight in. He learned with facility all the terms of fortification and of navigation; knew all the different parts of a strong ship, and of a man of war; and took pleasure in marshalling as soldiers a company of boys who had voluntarily enlisted themselves to form his troop.[^[313]] All this the great Marlborough himself taught him. In the departments of classical literature and theology, the Duke had another preceptor, scarcely less celebrated.

Dr. Gilbert Burnet, whom William now appointed governor to the Duke of Gloucester in conjunction with Marlborough, was at this time Bishop of Salisbury, a see which he wished to resign on being appointed preceptor to the young Prince; being conscientiously averse from holding any preferment, the duties of which he could not in person superintend. Dr. Burnet was the intimate friend of the Countess of Marlborough; and probably he had had some share in forming her political opinions, and in weaning her from the Tory party, in whose principles the Countess had been reared.

It was scarcely possible for the Countess to possess a more valuable friend, nor the Duke of Gloucester a more enlightened preceptor, than this able, uncompromising advocate of civil and religious freedom—this pious divine, this disinterested, scrupulous, and zealous man. Burnet was of Scotch descent, and his character exhibited some of the noblest features which distinguish the inhabitants of the north of the Tweed, in all varieties of situation and circumstance. Like many great men, he owed much of his eminence, and most of his religious impressions, to his mother. She was a Presbyterian, a sister of the famous Sir Alexander Johnston, Lord Warristoun, who headed the Presbyterians during the civil wars, and whom no alliance nor kindred could bend to show any lenity to those who refused the solemn league and covenant. Dr. Burnet’s father, differing from these opinions, from the conviction that the Presbyterians did not intend to reform abuses in the Episcopal church, but to destroy that church itself, resolutely rejected the league and covenant; and was, on that account, at three several times, obliged to fly from his native county of Aberdeen; and, during one occasion, to remain five years in exile. Such were some of the consequences of fanatic zeal, in those disturbed and uncomfortable times.

By his father, himself a barrister, Burnet was educated, until he attained ten years of age, when, being a master of the Latin tongue, he was removed to Aberdeen College, and at fourteen began to study for the bar; such was the precocity of his intellect; in some respects, the effect of the custom of the day.

Fortunately for the Church of England, Burnet, after a year’s application to the law, changed his course of studies, and applied himself to divinity, for which his father had originally destined him. When eighteen years of age, he was put upon his trial as a probationary preacher, the first step in Scotland towards an admission into orders, both in the Episcopal and in the Presbyterian church. From this epoch in his career, he devoted his life to the service of the church. He improved his notions upon many matters, in those times still unsettled, relative to the rites and ceremonies of the church, by conversing with the learned at the English universities. By foreign travelling, he enlarged his ideas concerning the differences into which learned and pious men fall, upon points of discipline and matters of doctrine. Whilst residing in Holland, he became acquainted with the leading men of the various persuasions tolerated in that country; the Arminians, Papists, Unitarians, Brownists, and Lutherans, all passed under review in his reflecting mind; and, from the observation of the pious dispositions and high motives, of which he met with instances among all professing Christians, he drew this satisfactory and benevolent conclusion, that nothing but general charity could be acceptable to the great Ruler of men; he learned to abhor severity, and to see the beauty and wisdom of universal toleration.

Thus prepared for the eminent station which he afterwards filled, and for the great part which he had to act, Burnet, during a protracted intercourse with the kings and nobles of the land, held fast his integrity. When chaplain to Charles the Second, he remonstrated with him on his licentious course of life, fearless of the consequences to himself. He laboured with as little success to convert James from the doctrines of papacy. At a time when silence would have best aided his preferment in the church, he published his History of the Reformation, for which he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. Nor did he lose any opportunity of publicly admonishing, and of privately reclaiming, the abandoned members of the aristocracy; and of calling sinners of all ranks and conditions to repentance. His preaching was earnest, unstudied, emphatic, effective. He improved upon the Scottish mode of giving premeditated discourses from memory, and by allotting many hours of the day to meditation on any given subject, and then accustoming himself to speak upon those aloud, he attained a remarkable facility in that mode of religious instruction, which is, of all others, when well acquired, the most effective.[^[314]]

It was whilst this excellent and energetic man was chaplain to Charles the Second, an unwilling witness of the corruptions of the court, that he was requested to visit a female of abandoned character, who had been treading the paths of destruction with the celebrated Wilmot Earl of Rochester. Burnet, at this time without any parochial duty, never refused his aid to those who sought it. He went to the sinner, and left her penitent; but the good which he did ceased not here, but shed its beams forth in a “naughty world.” The Earl of Rochester, hearing of the manner in which the divine had reclaimed the unfortunate partner of his guilt, sent for Burnet; and during a whole winter, once in every week, went over with him all those topics by which infidelity attacks the christian religion. The judgment of the sceptic, Rochester, was convinced; his conviction of the importance of moral duty established; his proud spirit laid prostrate; his opinions and his deportment entirely changed. He died a sincere penitent; whilst Burnet, in bequeathing to posterity the memorial of the sceptical difficulties, of the true contrition, of this misled and sinful man, has left to the infatuated and to the erring a legacy of inestimable price. In the words of Dr. Johnson, speaking of the bishop’s account of these conferences, entitled “Some Passages in the Life of John Earl of Rochester,” “the critic ought to read it for its elegance, the philosopher for its argument, the saint for its piety.”[^[315]]

Burnet, both by his own account and that of his biographer, appears to have been very unwilling to undertake the charge now offered to him by the King, and pressed upon him by the Princess. “I used,” he says, “all possible endeavours to decline the office.”

Having once, however, consented, he devoted himself with his usual ardour to the important task of educating the Prince. His admirable observations on education, in the conclusion of his History, show how excellently qualified the bishop was for the task. He went beyond his age, and was devoid of the narrow views and prejudices of his time. The great design of instruction was, as he justly thought, to inculcate great and noble sentiments, to give general information, to avoid pedantry, and to represent virtue and religion in the true light, as the only important, the only stable acquisitions in this sublunary state. He looked with regret on the errors committed by parents of the highest rank, who, lavish in other respects, were narrow in their notions of expenditure on education; he regarded education as “the foundation of all that could be proposed for bettering the next age.” He considered that “it should be one of the chief cares of all government.”[^[316]]

With such a preceptor, it may readily be supposed how exact, and how earnest, would be those lessons guided by such high principles. “I took,” says the bishop, “to my own province, the reading and explaining the scriptures to him, the instructing him in the principles of religion and the rules of virtue, and the giving him a view of history, geography, politics, and government;” instructions which the peculiar though simple eloquence of the bishop might have rendered invaluable in any other case.

But such advantages as these were adapted to one of riper years, and of a more hardy constitution than the feeble Prince. His progress was indeed amazing. Under the guidance of the bishop he attained a religious knowledge which was, says Burnet, “beyond imagination.” His inquiries, his reflections, his pursuits, were those of a precocious and highly endowed mind. The custom of the times authorised this hot-bed culture to the infant mind. Our nobles and gentry were generally members of the universities at a period of life when now they would be school-boys. But the approved mode of rearing a vigorous plant cannot be pursued with a tender and delicate shoot. Henry Prince of Wales, the wonder of the court of James the First; and the Duke of Gloucester, the last remaining object of the Princess Anne’s maternal affection, are instances of excellence too prematurely developed to be permanent. The event of two years showed, indeed, that the care and zeal bestowed upon the powers of the Duke’s mind might with advantage have been postponed, however admirable the intentions, and valuable the instructions, of his distinguished preceptors.

Whilst Marlborough, with his eminent colleague, was training up the young Prince to prove, as they hoped, an honour to his country, the great general’s own family were growing up around him, displaying more than the ordinary graces and promise of youth. At this time, five children, one son and four daughters, formed the domestic circle of Lord and Lady Marlborough. Yet they were not destined to derive unalloyed felicity from these fondly prized objects of paternal affection. Their eldest son, afterwards Marquis of Blandford, a youth of considerable attainments, and of great moral excellence, was eventually consigned by his disconsolate parents to an early grave. The beauty and talents of their daughters were counterbalanced by defects which occasioned many heart-burnings, and much “home-bred” infelicity, in the latter period of Lady Marlborough’s life.

Henrietta, the eldest daughter of these distinguished parents, inherited much of her mother’s spirit, with more than Lady Marlborough’s personal charms, and with a great portion of that mother’s less enviable temper. When old age and bitter humiliation had added to the Duchess of Marlborough’s native moroseness, which they ought rather to have subdued, their eldest daughter and she were long at variance, and never reconciled. Yet, in a happier season, better expectations and brighter hopes were formed in the prospect of an union between Lady Henrietta, and the son of Lord and Lady Marlborough’s most intimate and valued friend. At this time, in her eighteenth year, the Lady Henrietta had already attracted many admirers. The intimacy of her parents with Lord Godolphin directed, however, her inclination to one object, Francis, Lord Rialton, the eldest son of the Earl. The attachment between these two young persons began at a very early age, and was viewed with approbation by the parents on both sides, although the advantages to be derived from the projected marriage were chiefly, in worldly respects, on the side of Lord Rialton; Godolphin having, two years previously, resigned his situation as first lord of the Treasury, at the time of Sir John Fenwick’s accusations, and, whilst he conducted the public finances, he had rather impaired than improved his own property. But similarity of political opinions, a close intimacy, mutual confidence and respect, rendered the prospect of a near alliance with Godolphin not only agreeable, but advantageous; and Marlborough, in his subsequent campaigns, and after Godolphin was reinstated in his office, experienced the benefit of possessing a friend at the head of that important department, in which Lord Godolphin, as first lord of the Treasury, aided all the great general’s designs, by a prompt attention to a supply of those means without which the most skilful projects could not have succeeded.

When Lady Henrietta had completed her eighteenth year, the marriage with Lord Rialton took place. The fortune of Lord Marlborough did not, at this time, authorise him to bestow a large portion on his daughter; yet he prudently and honourably declined the ample settlement which the Princess Anne, with kindness of intention, and delicacy of manner, offered to make in favour of the lovely bride. The sum which her royal highness proposed was ten thousand pounds; one half of which was accepted by her favourites, who added five thousand pounds to the liberal gift. And with an establishment ill suited to their rank, but probably sufficient for happiness, the young couple were obliged to be content.

Lady Anne Churchill, next in age to Lady Rialton, and according to Horace Walpole, “the most beautiful of all Lady Churchill’s four charming daughters,”[^[317]] excelled her sister Henrietta in sweetness of disposition, as well as in external advantages. Her amiable manners, and the possession of mental qualities beyond her age, particularly endeared this beautiful and affectionate daughter to her parents. She was the object of admiration, as well as of affection. Lady Anne received, before her marriage, the flattering tribute of complimentary verses from Lord Godolphin, who delighted to relieve the duties of the great master of finance by the fascinating attempts of the poetaster.[^[318]] Lord Halifax, of whose poetry, we must agree with Dr. Johnson, that “a short time has withered the beauties,”[^[319]] celebrated also the charms of Lady Anne, in verses somewhat better, though not above mediocrity. Yet it was not the fate of this admired young lady, at first, to inspire that ardent attachment in the husband selected for her by her parents, which her beauty and her goodness of disposition merited.

Amongst the most intimate of Lord Marlborough’s friends, Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, secretary of state and president of the council to James the Second, had proved himself, at the time of Marlborough’s disgrace at court, the most zealous of his advocates. Sunderland, who had encountered a variety of accusations for countenancing popery to please King James, and for betraying that monarch afterwards to William, was now in high favour with the reigning sovereign, over whom he exercised a remarkable ascendency. Although beloved neither by Whig nor Tory, his ministry was more efficient than any which succeeded it in the time of William. Of disputed integrity, but of acknowledged talents, Lord Sunderland was, however, constrained to bend beneath the violence of party. He withdrew about this time from public life, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of the King that he would remain near him; and, fearing that in the attacks made upon him by the Tories he would not be supported by the Whigs, Sunderland fled from the censures for which he felt there was too real a foundation, in his conduct during the preceding reign.[^[320]]

Between the Countess of Sunderland and Lady Marlborough there existed a friendship of an enthusiastic, almost a romantic character. This affectionate intimacy was accounted for by mutual obligations and common misfortunes, shared by the two great statesmen, the husbands of these two ladies.

After the revolution, Marlborough had exerted his influence to assist Sunderland in exile and distress. When Marlborough fell into disgrace, Lord Sunderland had pleaded his cause, and adhered to him with a grateful constancy; advocating with the King the expediency of placing Marlborough in the office of preceptor to the young Duke of Gloucester. The warm attachment between the two Countesses sometimes aroused even the jealousy of the Princess Anne, who considered Lady Sunderland as her rival in the affection of the spoiled and flattered Lady Marlborough,[^[321]] and envied the terms of equality which rendered the friendship of the two Countesses a source of mutual happiness. Not devoid of romance in her early years, though in her latter days she degenerated into coarseness of mind and vulgarity of manners, Anne felt, it seems, the insuperable barrier which her exalted rank had placed between her and the delights of a true, disinterested friendship.

Charles Lord Spencer, the only son of the Earl and Countess of Sunderland, reported to have been famed alike for “his skill in negociations and his rapid equestrian movements,”[^[322]] was the object to whom the ambition of his parents now pointed, as a probable bond of union between their family and the powerful houses of Marlborough and Godolphin. The lovely Lady Anne was god-daughter to the Countess of Sunderland. Her beauty, her accomplishments, and the favour which she already enjoyed with the Princess Anne, were all cogent reasons for promoting the match, in the eyes of the veteran courtier and statesman, Sunderland. The first proposals in the affair seem to have originated on his side. In one of the letters written on the subject he says:[^[323]]

“If I see him so settled, I shall desire nothing more in this world but to die in peace, if it please God. I must add this, that if he can be thus happy, he will be governed in everything, public and private, by Lord Marlborough. I have particularly talked to him of that, and he is sensible how advantageous it will be to him to do so. I need not, I am sure, desire that this may be a secret to every one but Lady Marlborough.”

Notwithstanding their friendship for the family of the Earl, the suggestion of a closer bond was not at first received by Lord and Lady Marlborough with encouragement. Perhaps they might regard the betrothing of their favourite daughter to Lord Spencer somewhat in the light of a sacrifice. That young nobleman had displayed a character of mind both uncommon and repulsive: grave, cold, and staid in his deportment, an ardent, impetuous, and somewhat haughty spirit was concealed beneath that icy exterior.[^[324]] His political principles were those of republicanism; his notions of filial duty were tinctured by the actions of his school-boy studies. Already had he anathematised his father in the House of Commons, with all the powers of a ready eloquence, and declared against the crafty Earl for protecting traitors, and for permitting his mother to harbour her own daughter, the wife of the attainted Lord Clancarty. For this act of Roman heroism, Lord Spencer had been extolled by the violent party, and his loyalty to the King eulogised; since, to serve his Majesty, he would not scruple to expose his father. But cautious observers had questioned this unnatural display, which was supposed to be concerted between the young lord and his father; and Lord Spencer had lost some friends from the supposition.[^[325]]

The detestation which Lord Spencer expressed for his father’s opinions, and especially for those which he had adopted on his conversion to the Church of Rome, was, however, sincere. On the death of Lord Sunderland, he took care to manifest his unseemly disrespect, by casting out of the library which his father had collected, all the works of the holy fathers, or, as he called them, “dregs of antiquity,” which he considered well replaced by the works of Machiavel.[^[326]] This self-opiniativeness characterised his whole career. Though professing himself a devoted adherent of Lord Somers, Lord Spencer had neither the moderation nor the true patriotism of that great and good man.[^[327]] He carried all his notions to extremes; mistook violence and recklessness for zeal, and bluntness for sincerity; and his private deportment was ill calculated to obliterate the unfavourable impression which his public career had imparted.

To this dark picture we must add, however, before we consider the portrait of Lord Sunderland to be complete, some, though few, enlivening touches. Eager for distinction, or at least for notoriety, this nobleman was, nevertheless, exempt from the mercenary motives by which many public men were debased. His high spirit led him, though not rich for his station, to reject a pension offered him by Queen Anne, when, during her reign, he was left out of the administration. The same indifference to his pecuniary interests caused him to reject, with indignation, the attempts made by his mother-in-law to reinstate him in his employments, in the reign of George the First.[^[328]] And when it is stated that he discarded the “holy fathers” from his library, after his father’s death, it must be added that he replaced them by numerous works of great value, forming a library of considerable extent, and selected with admirable judgment.

To this ungenial partner the young and lovely Anne was eventually consigned. At first, indeed, her parents made many objections to the marriage. The coldness and indifference of Lord Spencer to their daughter was the chief obstacle. He was now a widower, having recently lost, in the Lady Arabella Cavendish, a wife whom he idolised, and for whom he still mourned with all the depth of feeling, and tenacity of a man of strong passions, and reserved nature. His political violence was another impediment, in the opinion of the rightly-judging mind of the great Marlborough, who saw in the times nothing to justify, but everything to deprecate, temerity and factious heats. But the Countess of Marlborough, more disposed to Whig opinions, viewed that objection to Lord Spencer with far less anxiety than his coldness to her darling child, and the increased gloom of the young nobleman’s deportment and countenance. From those she augured little of happiness to a daughter for whom she evinced true maternal apprehensions, and who lived not to harass and aggravate her, when the once fascinating Countess, degenerated into “Old Marlborough,” had become captious and vindictive. High-minded, though faulty, Lady Marlborough dreaded that her daughter should be sacrificed to a man who loved her not, and who might be induced to marry whilst his affections were buried in the grave of another. The eagerness of Lord and Lady Sunderland for the promotion of the match—their remonstrances, the earnest solicitations, which they addressed to their son—all added to her apprehensions, and occasioned her to draw back somewhat from the first steps in her projected alliance.

By degrees, however, the grief of the gloomy young widower yielded to the loveliness and youthful graces of the Lady Anne. He began not only to tolerate, but to cherish, the idea of a second marriage. The growing attachment became ardent, as his other passions; and his mother, eagerly communicating the change in his feelings to her friend, urged Lady Marlborough to hasten an union now anxiously desired by her once reluctant son.

Lady Marlborough found some scruples, some objections on the part of her husband, still to overcome. But her influence was paramount. In spite of many forebodings, induced by the headstrong nature of Lord Spencer, he gave his consent; but his prognostications, that political differences between him and his future son-in-law would ere long arise, were unhappily justified.

The marriage, however, after a series of negociations which lasted eighteen months, was solemnised at St. Albans in January 1699–1700, the Princess Anne bestowing a dowry of five thousand pounds upon the bride, and her father adding as much more.[^[329]]

The young couple appear to have lived happily together, though not without some alloys from the habits and circumstances of Charles Lord Sunderland. Lady Sunderland became the centre of a political and fashionable circle, and, as the “Little Whig,” (so called from the smallness of her stature,) took the lead in that party in the great world. Years afterwards, the solicitude which Swift evinced to conciliate her ladyship’s favour, when, during the struggle for power between the contending parties, the influence of the “Little Whig” might avail his selfish pursuits, proves the estimation in which Lady Sunderland’s fascinations were held.[^[330]]

The Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgwater, third daughter of the Earl and Countess of Marlborough, is said to have eclipsed her three sisters in beauty of countenance, eminently gifted as they were in personal advantages, whilst she was inferior to none in excellence of disposition. Her face is described to have been remarkable for symmetry: and its sweet and intelligent expression lent that indescribable charm to beauty which, in Lady Elizabeth, captivated some singular and highly-gifted admirers. Pope ventured to admire, and admiring, first depicted her face, and then her mind.

“Hence Beauty, waking, all her forms supplies,

An angel’s sweetness, or Bridgwater’s eyes.”[^[331]]

Yet the poet threw all the drawings which he is said to have made of this amiable lady into the fire. “She was,” says the monumental inscription to her memory in Little Gaddesden church, Hertfordshire, “a lady of exquisite fineness, both of mind and body; agreeably tall; of a delicate shape and beautiful mien; of a most obliging, winning carriage; sweetness, modesty, affability, were met together; whatsoever is virtuous, decent, and praiseworthy, she made the rule of all her actions; her discourse was cheerful, lively, and ingenuous; pleasing, without ever saying too much or too little; so that her virtue appeared with the greatest advantage and lustre; her address was as became her quality, great, without pride; admired and unenvied by her equals; and none condescended with greater grace and satisfaction to her inferiors.”[^[332]]

For this accomplished being a suitable settlement in life was provided; and, at a very early age, she was united to Scrope, Earl, and afterwards Duke, of Bridgwater.

If we may judge from the inscription on her monument, this union appears to have been as replete with happiness as the fondest parents could have wished. “Happy,” says the epitaph, “her lord in such a wife; happy her children in such a mother; happy her servants that duly attended upon her. Being arrived at the highest pitch of worldly felicity, in full enjoyment of tenderest love and esteem of her entirely beloved husband, universally admired and spoken of for every good quality.”[^[333]]

Such were the terms employed in describing this beloved child of the Marlborough family, whose early fate, like that of her sister, Lady Sunderland, afterwards embittered their father’s old age, and hastened his death by the effects of grief.

His youngest daughter, Lady Mary, Pope’s “Angel Duchess Montagu,” married, in 1705, John Montagu, Duke of Montagu, Grand Master of the Order of the Bath, and the trusted servant of successive sovereigns.[^[334]] The Duchess of Montagu became, eventually, one of the bedchamber ladies to the Princess of Males, afterwards Queen Caroline, towards whom her mother, the Duchess of Marlborough, imbibed a strong aversion. “The Angel Duchess Montagu,” beautiful as her sisters, appears not to have verified that name in her subsequent conduct to her mother, with whom she was long at bitter variance. At this epoch of the Duchess of Marlborough’s life, Lady Mary was, however, yet a child, and her mother’s temper had not shone forth, as afterwards it became apparent, in her conduct.

Thus, in the exalted stations which her children attained, the ambition of Lady Marlborough, as a mother, may be supposed to have been fully gratified. But whilst she accomplished for them, aided by their personal advantages, connexions all advantageous, though not equally splendid, she omitted to sow the good seed of filial subjection, which is ever best secured by cultivating the affections. In her family she may be said to have been peculiarly unhappy. Not many years elapsed after Lord Marlborough was raised to a dukedom, before his son, the Marquis of Blandford, the sole male representative of his father’s honours, was summoned to an early grave. The title eventually descended in the female line, and Lady Godolphin became Duchess of Marlborough. With this daughter Lady Marlborough was many years embroiled in endless contentions, and the latter period of the illustrious Marlborough’s life was employed in the vain attempt to mediate between two fierce and grasping combatants. Money, as usual, was the cause of the combustion, and a total alienation the result.

Lady Sunderland died young, but her sons became at once the delight and the torment of their grandmother in the decline of her long-lived importance, and, as it almost appeared, of her judgment and sense of decorum.

Lady Bridgwater also died too early for her contentions with her mother to be signalised; but she left a daughter, the Duchess of Bedford, afterwards married to Lord Jersey, between whom and the Duchess of Marlborough a running warfare was long maintained.

With her youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, the irritable Duchess was on terms equally unhappy. The Duke of Marlborough was heard to observe, speaking to his wife of this daughter, “I wonder you cannot agree, you are so alike!”—a speech which augurs ill for the Duchess of Montagu’s temper. The lively and amiable Duchess of Manchester, granddaughter of the aged and morose Sarah, and described by one who knew her as “all spirit, justice, honour,” possessed that influence over her grandmother which gay and open characters often seem to acquire, by the unpremeditated frankness which charms whilst it half offends. “Duchess of Manchester,” said her old grandmother to her one day, “you are a good creature, but you have a mother.”—“And she has a mother,” was the arch and fearless reply.[^[335]]

Such were the anecdotes in circulation at a later period. In her own youth Lady Marlborough rendered the beauty and accomplishments of her daughters serviceable in her own elevation to power. She afterwards obtained for so many of them posts about the Queen, that Anne was said to have her court composed of one family.[^[336]] Yet the Duchess lived to prove, in the joyless isolation of her old age, how completely all our wishes may be realised without producing happiness.